The Last Space Shuttle Launches Safely Into Orbit | WIRED The Last Space Shuttle Launches Safely Into Orbit subscribe 6 months for $5 - plus a FREE Portable Phone Charger. On Twitter 5 hours A comedy about the apocalypse—penned by @neilhimself —is slated for 2018. So there's that to look forward to at least bit.ly/2jcWNvp Author: Dave Mosher. Dave Mosher Science Date of Publication: 07.08.11. Time of Publication: 11:38 am. 11:38 am The Last Space Shuttle Launches Safely Into Orbit CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — The last mission in NASA’s decades-long space shuttle program is now underway. Atlantis rocketed into orbit today at 11:29 a.m. EDT and is flying at 17,500 mph around the Earth. The mission, STS-135, will catch up with the International Space Station in two days. The space shuttle launch marks the last in NASA’s history, closing out a government-funded space program that lasted 30 years.

“The shuttle’s always going to be a reflection of what a great nation can do when it commits to be bold and follow through,” said astronaut Chris Ferguson, commander of the mission, from the cockpit of Atlantis just before pushing into space atop a billowing cloud of fumes. “We’re completing a chapter of a journey that will never end. Let’s light this fire one more time, and witness this great nation at its best.” During their 12-day mission, Ferguson and his three crewmembers — veteran astronauts Doug Hurley, Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim — plan to wrap up construction of the space station. They’ll deliver a new room crammed with a year’s worth of food, water and other supplies and perform a suite of experiments in orbit, including the test of a bag able to recycle urine and a space-based iPhone application . They expect to land July 20 at 7:06 a.m. EDT. NASA’s space shuttle program has encountered both glowing support and heated opposition throughout its history. The space shuttle’s designers intended to make human spaceflight routine, safe and relatively inexpensive by launching the reusable spaceship 64 times per year at a cost of roughly $54 million (inflation-adjusted) per launch.

In reality, the program averaged fewer than five launches a year and $1.5 billion per launch. “It’s a tough technical challenge to build a reusable spacecraft, and the president’s Office of Management … drew a line on how much money would be spent,” said Wayne Hale , a former NASA mission manager who now works as a director of human spaceflight for Special Aerospace Services. Early on, Hale said, the program never got the roughly $5 billion it needed to build a robust launch system that could handle 64 launches a year, so it was forced to make costly compromises. “If we really wanted to have something that would have flown as frequently, we would have spent more,” he said. But space-policy expert John Logsdon of George Washington University thinks the shuttle was the wrong spacecraft altogether. “Rather than lowering the costs of access to space and making it routine, the space shuttle turned out to be an experimental vehicle with multiple inherent risks, requiring extreme care and high costs to operate safely,” he wrote in an op-ed published Wednesday by MIT Technology Review . The space agency ultimately launched 135 space shuttle missions since 1981 at a total cost of about $209 billion.

Two of the missions — Challenger‘s last in 1986 and Columbia’s in 2003 — ended catastrophically and claimed the lives of 14 astronauts. For all its setbacks, however, the program is on schedule to complete the most ambitious orbital laboratory ever conceived. It also delivered (and repaired) the Hubble Space Telescope , as well as an army of other artificial satellites. The future of U.S. human spaceflight won’t end with the conclusion of Atlantis‘ mission. But the shape of things to come is uncertain. No American spacecraft is ready to ferry astronauts to the space station during its anticipated 10-year lifespan. NASA is seeding money to commercial spaceflight companies to develop a human-ready spaceship, but the space agency expects a viable spacecraft to emerge no earlier than five years from now. Until then, the United States will purchase flights on board Russia’s Soyuz system for its astronaut corps. NASA is dreaming up missions beyond low-Earth orbit, however, and awaiting Apollo-era-like clarity from the president. “I think we as a species need to be thinking about living off this planet long-term, very long-term.

We need to learn to live on another body” like the moon, said space shuttle launch director Michael Leinbach in a pre-launch press briefing. “But I’m not the policy-maker, I’m the implementer. I need to be told what to do.” Lisa Grossman contributed to this report. Images: Space shuttle Atlantis lifts off Launch Pad 39A for the last time. (Dave Mosher/Wired.com) NASA - The Space Shuttle Comments Since 1981, NASA space shuttles have been rocketing from the Florida coast into Earth orbit. The five orbiters — Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour — have flown more than 130 times, carrying over 350 people into space and travelling more than half a billion miles, more than enough to reach Jupiter. Designed to return to Earth and land like a giant glider, the shuttle was the world's first reusable space vehicle. More than all of that, though, the shuttle program expanded the limits of human achievement and broadened our understanding of our world.

It all started with STS-1, launched on April 12, 1981, just twenty years to the day after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. When astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen launched that morning in Columbia, it was the first time in history a new spacecraft was launched on its maiden voyage with a crew aboard. For an entire generation, the space shuttle was NASA. We've watched a parade of firsts -- Sally Ride, Guy Bluford, Kathy Sullivan, John Glenn and others. We've seen astronauts float free, and launch and repair spacecraft like Hubble which have fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe. In this feature, we look back at the Shuttle's historic missions, the people it flew into space, and its achievements. Interactive Mission Timeline of the Space Transportation System Key The colors of the links correspond to a different orbiter. COLUMBIA Atlantis: Last Shuttle Launch Atlantis: Last Space Shuttle Launch By Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor | June 29, 2013 07:41am ET MORE Atlantis was the fourth shuttle constructed and the last one to fly into space.

It performed well in 25 years of service, flying 33 missions that included secret missions for the U.S. military, ferrying astronauts to and from space stations and launching several probes. The shuttle gained a reputation of being the unsung workhorse of the shuttle fleet because it sent so many satellites into space. It also has the distinction of flying the final shuttle mission before the fleet was retired in 2011. The space shuttle Atlantis is seen over the Bahamas prior to a perfect docking with the International Space Station at 11:07 a.m. (EDT) on July 10, 2011 on Flight Day 3 of NASA's last shuttle flight. Part of a Russian Progress spacecraft which is docked to the station is in the foreground. Credit: NASA Atlantis was named after a ship that did work for Massachusetts' Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute between 1930 and 1966. The sailing ship was the first to image the ocean floor using electronic sounding devices. New construction technique and early missions Construction work started on shuttle Atlantis on March 3, 1980, in Palmdale, Calif.

Using what it had learned from its other shuttles, NASA built Atlantis in less time than its siblings. It was also lighter than the other shuttles. NASA used thermal protection covers on the top of the shuttle rather than individual tiles, which saved substantial time and money during its construction. Atlantis ended up almost 3.5 tons lighter than Columbia, weighing in at 151,315 pounds. It took about six months to get ready for its first mission, which lifted off Oct. 3, 1985. To this day, Atlantis' first flight is shrouded in secrecy. Mission STS-51J took five people into space and lasted four days. At the time, NASA did periodic flights for the Department of Defense, sending classified payloads into space. Just over one month later, Atlantis headed for space again on Nov. 26, 1985, on mission STS-61B. It lofted three communications satellites into orbit. Additionally, Atlantis' crew members did two experimental spacewalks devoted to learning about assembling structures in space. The Challenger explosion in January 1986 grounded the remaining shuttle fleet for two years.

It wasn't until December 1988 that Atlantis flew again, this time bringing another classified payload into space on STS-27. Sending probes towards the planets Atlantis' fourth flight, STS-30, marked a historic first for NASA. On board the shuttle was Magellan , a spacecraft that would be launched toward Venus. This was the first time that NASA launched an interplanetary probe from the shuttle's payload bay. The astronauts sent the satellite on its way remarkably quickly, only six hours after launch. Magellan fired its rocket stages successfully to coast to Venus. Its radar peered beneath Venus' thick clouds and eventually mapped 98 percent of the hot planet's surface. STS-30 marked the beginning of a flurry of satellite and classified payload launches for the orbiter. Atlantis repeated its interplanetary feat on STS-34, when it sent the Galileo probe toward Jupiter. It then flew two classified missions for the Department of Defense before sending yet another probe into space on STS-37, in 1991: the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory . Astronauts had to do an emergency spacewalk to fix a high-gain antenna that refused to deploy.

Once that was fixed, the observatory successfully watched supernovas and neutron stars for nine years. Atlantis went on to deploy a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite on its next mission, STS-43. Next, it lofted a defense satellite on STS-44, and a European tethered gravity experimental satellite on STS-46. Seven straight to Mir In the mid-1990s, Atlantis' focus changed again. NASA and Russia had brokered an agreement for American astronauts to stay aboard the Mir space station, which would give both sides experience in working together in space ahead of the planned International Space Station . Space shuttle Atlantis rolls out to Launch Pad 39A on Nov. 10, 2007 for its launch in December. Credit: NASA TV. NASA flew 11 missions to Mir, and Atlantis shouldered most of the work. The shuttle flew seven times in a row to the orbiting science platform, ferrying astronauts back and forth. STS-71 lifted off on June 27, 1995, to usher in several historic moments. The flight was the first shuttle mission to head to the Mir space station .

When some of the crew swapped places to head back home, Atlantis also became the first shuttle to see its astronaut manifest change in space. Also, the mission marked the 100th human spaceflight launch from Kennedy Space Center . Atlantis and Mir, when hooked together, formed the largest spacecraft orbiting Earth, at the time. The space station and space shuttle together weighed about 225 tons, or almost half a million pounds. While on board, the joint U.S.-Russia crew brought equipment into the space station and did several biomedical experiments. The shuttle flew again to the station in November 1995 on mission STS-74. Among the astronauts on board was Chris Hadfield, the first and only Canadian to make it to the Mir space station. On STS-79, Atlantis brought home Shannon Lucid after she spent 188 days in space, a record for an American astronaut. Atlantis also returned American Jerry Linenger to Earth after he had a challenging stay aboard Mir, which included a fire aboard the station as well as the need to do ongoing repairs on the aging facility.

Shuttle Atlantis reaches orbit for final time - USATODAY.com Shuttle Atlantis reaches orbit for final time By Donna Leinwand Leger, USA TODAY Updated CAPE CANAVERAL  The space shuttle Atlantis blazed into history with a picture-perfect launch Friday that lit up a gray sky and shook the earth around Kennedy Space Center . By Morry Gash, AP The space shuttle Atlantis lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center Friday in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Atlantis is the 135th and final space shuttle launch for NASA. Enlarge Close By Morry Gash, AP The space shuttle Atlantis lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center Friday in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Atlantis is the 135th and final space shuttle launch for NASA. Atlantis soared into a sliver of blue sky at 11:29 a.m., spewing fire and a huge plume of smoke before it disappeared into a blanket of high clouds that had threatened to disrupt the final flight of the U.S. space shuttle program. When the Atlantis touches down in 12 days, NASA 's three decades of manned flight into Earth's orbit will glide to an end, leaving as its legacy the International Space Station .

"We will never see that again," Launch Director Mike Leinbach said of the launch. "It was a special moment." STORY: Unsung heroes kept shuttle flying That moment brought even the coolest of engineers to tears. "I choke up at every launch," said Mike Moses, chairman of the Mission Management Team, who is known for his dispassionate assessments of shuttle operations. "I can't see how anyone who comes down here to see the launch doesn't choke up and swell with pride." President Obama congratulated the shuttle astronauts and thanked NASA employees for their 30 years of work on the shuttle program. "Today's launch may mark the final flight of the space shuttle, but it propels us into the next era of our never-ending adventure to push the very frontiers of exploration and discovery in space," he said. "We'll drive new advances in science and technology. We'll enhance knowledge, education, innovation and economic growth. And I have tasked the men and women of NASA with an ambitious new mission: to break new boundaries in space exploration, ultimately sending Americans to Mars. I know they are up to the challenge — and I plan to be around to see it." Nearly a million people crowded the Space Coast 's beaches and parks to watch the last launch.

Some of the spectators camped out overnight for prime spots. At the Kennedy Space Center, spectators included more than 1,500 journalists from around the world; politicians, including Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Attorney General Eric Holder; and singers Jimmy Buffett and Gloria Estefan . Astronaut Dave Williams, a physician who has flown two shuttle missions and now runs a hospital near Toronto, watched the launch from the edge of a pond at the space center. "Such a beautiful launch," he said. "It was a fitting end to a remarkable program," adding that the shuttle "has vastly exceeded everyone's expectations." Williams said he can envision the day when an astronaut witnesses the sun setting on Mars. "It's going to happen," he said. "It's just a question of when." The weather, a broad system of thunderstorms that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico across Florida, had stacked the odds against a Friday launch. Thursday, the space center's weather desk gave the shuttle only a 30% chance of launch. The management team decided early Friday morning to fuel the shuttle tanks despite the poor forecast. "We've tanked with worse predictions than that," Leinbach said.

"And we got lucky." A reconnaissance aircraft flew through the weather system to determine the position and thickness of the clouds, Moses said. In the end, NASA violated its written rule that prohibits a launch when rain showers are within 20 nautical miles of a landing site, Moses said. Analysts kept sharp eyes on the radar, he said. The crowd gathered by a giant countdown clock at the space center assumed a scrub when the clocked stopped with 31 seconds until launch and didn't resume for two minutes. NASA delayed liftoff when an indicator gauge lit, showing a vent had not fully retracted from the orbiter's external fuel tank. Once the crew checked it out, the countdown resumed. The shuttle lifted off with 58 seconds remaining in the launch window. "It truly was an awesome, spectacular launch," Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana said. "The only way it could have been better was if I could have found a way to stow away on it." At Johnson Space Center in Houston, which takes control of the mission, crowds overflowed the 700-person auditorium. Many of the NASA workers and contractors brought their children and grandparents to see the final launch.

"We all cheered, it was so exciting," said Kirsten Thompson of Houston, a former shuttle flight controller until 2008, who brought her 20-month-old daughter, Victoria. "We wanted her to see this really special day." The crowd groaned at the delay 31 seconds before the launch, then cheered when the countdown resumed. The savvy audience cheered the separation of the boosters and external tanks as loudly as the launch itself. "Those are the danger points you want to see successfully over," Thompson said. "I'm a little choked up. This is what NASA is all about." Atlantis, set to dock at the International Space Station on Sunday, is delivering nearly a year's worth of food, spare parts and other supplies to sustain the station until rockets and capsules from commercial companies can resupply the station. The crew — Cmdr. Chris Ferguson , pilot Doug Hurley and Mission Spcs. Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim — will install the Robotic Refueling Mission, an experiment to develop techniques to robotically refuel satellites in space. At Kennedy Space Center, sentiment reigned throughout the morning as crews completed equipment tests and closed out each system.

Before leaving the White Room , where astronauts wait before boarding the capsule, closeout crewmembers who prepare the room held up signs with a message of thanks, according to NASA. "On behalf of all who have designed and built, serviced and loaded, launched and controlled, operated and flown these magnificent space vehicles ï¿½ thank you for 30 years with our nation's space shuttles! Godspeed Atlantis! God bless America!" the sign read. Mission employees lingered in the control room after the launch, Leinbach said. "It was like the end of a party, and you just don't want to leave," he said. Contributing: Dan Vergano in Houston For more information about reprints & permissions , visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com . Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com .

Posted Space Shuttle Atlantis Lifts Off for Last Mission - The New York Times The New York Times Space & Cosmos |Atlantis Lifts Off for Last Space Shuttle Mission Search Continue reading the main story Photo The space shuttle Atlantis lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on its final mission into space. Credit Philip Scott Andrews/The New York Times KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — For the last time, the engines of a space shuttle roared, the ground rumbled, and the shuttle Atlantis rose off the launching pad and disappeared into the clouds. By dawn Friday, cars and Winnebagos lined the sides of roadways with prime views as hundreds of thousands of people came to watch the 135th flight in the space shuttle program. The program, which began in 1981, comes to an end when the Atlantis’ wheels roll to a stop on the runway in two weeks. According to NASA , the luminaries who came included Joe Gibbs, the former Washington Redskins football coach; Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer; and the singer Jimmy Buffett. So did 14 members of Congress; John Holdren, the president’s science adviser; Eric Holder, the United States attorney general; Adm.

Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and two former NASA administrators, Daniel Goldin and Michael Griffin. And Robert L. Crippen, a retired Navy captain who was the pilot of the first shuttle flight, came to watch the last one. The last shuttle flight also contained a piece of the first flight. The shuttle’s solid rocket boosters are recovered and refurbished, and the top segment of the left booster that helped lift the Atlantis off the ground on Friday first flew on the first flight, on April 12, 1981. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The Atlantis is carrying 8,000 pounds of supplies and spare parts to the International Space Station. With storms rumbling around the area, forecasts had given just a 30 percent chance of favorable weather for the launching of the Atlantis. “We had a decent shot at it,” Michael D. Leinbach, the shuttle launching director, said, explaining the decision early Friday to begin pumping more than half a million gallons of rocket fuel into the external fuel tank despite the uncertain forecast. The rain stayed away, the clouds thinned, and the countdown, which encountered no significant setbacks, continued.

Video Atlantis Rising embed “Good luck, Godspeed and have a little fun up there,” Mr. Leinbach said to the crew after his team gave the go-ahead for the final few minutes of countdown. The commander of Atlantis, Capt. Christopher J. Ferguson of the Navy, thanked Mr. Leinbach and the launching team. Noting the end of the shuttle era, he added: “The shuttle is always going to be a reflection of what a great nation can do when it dares to be bold and commits to follow through. We’re not ending the journey today, Mike, we’re completing a chapter in a journey that will never end.” At 31 seconds before the scheduled liftoff, the countdown clock halted. An electronic signal indicated that the “beanie cap” that vents oxygen gas from the external fuel tank had failed to retract. But by looking at video images, mission controllers confirmed that the arm had indeed fully retracted. At 11:29 a.m. — two and a half minutes later than scheduled — the engines of the Atlantis ignited to propel it to orbit with its crew of four: Capt. Ferguson; Col. Douglas G. Hurley of the Marines; Sandra H.

Magnus; and Rex J. Walheim, a retired Air Force colonel. After a minute, the shuttle, leaving behind a thick plume of smoke, disappeared into the clouds. Although the spacecraft was out of sight, the still-rising plume cast a shadow onto the clouds to mark its trajectory to space, and the Atlantis reached orbit in eight and a half minutes. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The astronauts will spend Saturday inspecting the heat shield and are to dock at the space station on Sunday. The mission is scheduled to last 12 days, with Atlantis returning to Earth on July 20, but NASA officials hope to stretch out the last flight one additional day. At a post-launching news conference, NASA officials repeated assertions that the end of the space shuttle program does not mean the end of human spaceflight and that American astronauts will continue to travel to the International Space Station, albeit on Russian rockets for at least several years. “You can’t do something else, you can’t do something better, unless you go through change,” said Robert D. Cabana, director of the Kennedy Space Center. Once the Atlantis had reached orbit and their job was done, members of the launching team lingered in the control room, Mr.

Leinbach said. “It seemed we didn’t want to leave,” he said. “It was like the end of a party, and you just don’t want to go. You just want to hang around a little bit longer and relish our friends and what we’ve accomplished.” Space Exploration | National Archives Career Development Resource Center Space Exploration Information about the United States space flight programs, including NASA missions and the astronauts who participate in the efforts to explore Earths galaxy. Contents: 1957 October 4 - The Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik, into space. November 3 - The Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 was launched with a dog named Laika on board. Laika did not survive the voyage. 1958 January 31 - Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States when it was sent into orbit on January 31, 1958. It was designed and built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the California Institute of Technology. The satellite was sent aloft from Cape Canaveral in Florida by the Jupiter C rocket that was designed, built, and launched by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) under the direction of Dr.

Wernher Von Braun. 1960 August 19 - The Soviet craft Sputnik 5 was launched, carrying the dogs Strelka and Belka. They became the first living beings to survive a trip into space. 1961 April 12 - Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. May 5 - Astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space. May 25 - President Kennedy challenged the country to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. 1962 February 20 - Astronaut John Glenn became the first American in orbit. June 16 - Valentina Nikolayeva Tereshkova became the first woman in space. 1965 March 18 - While tethered to his spacecraft, cosmonaut Alexi Leonov became the first man to walk in space. June 3 - Astronaut Ed White became the first American to walk in space. July 14 - The spacecraft Mariner 4 transmitted the first pictures of Mars. 1966 February 3 - The Russian spacecraft Luna 9 became the first spacecraft to land on the moon.

June 2 - Surveyor 1 became the first American spacecraft to land on the moon. 1967 January 27 - Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were killed in an accidental fire in a command module on the launch pad. April 24 - Cosmonaut Vladimir M. Komarov was killed in a crash when the parachute on his Soyuz 1 spacecraft failed to deploy. October 18 - A descent capsule from the Soviet probe Venera 4 collected data about the atmosphere of Venus. 1968 September 15 - The Soviet spacecraft Zond 5 was launched and later became the first spacecraft to orbit the moon and return to Earth. December 21 - Apollo 8 was launched, and later her crewmembers became the first men to orbit the moon. 1969 July 20 - Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men on the moon. 1970 April 11 - Apollo 13 was launched. September 12 - The Soviet craft Luna 16 was launched and became the first automatic spacecraft to return soil samples of the moon.

November 17 - The Soviet automatic robot Lunokhod 1 landed on the moon with Luna 17. December 15 - The Soviet Venera 7 became the first probe to land on Venus. 1971 April 19 - The Soviet space station Salyut 1 was launched. July 30 - The moon rover was driven on the moon for the first time. November 13 - The Mariner 9 probe became the first craft to orbit another world - Mars. 1972 December 11 - Eugene Cernan and Harrison "Jack" Schmitt became the last men to walk on the moon. 1973 May 14 - The U.S. launched its first space station, Skylab. 1975 July 17 - The American Apollo 18 and Soviet Soyuz 19 dock in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. 1976 September - The American probe Viking 2 discovered water frost on the Martian surface. 1977 August and September - Voyagers 1 and 2 were launched.

(Voyager 2 was launched before Voyager 1, but Voyager 1 was on a faster trajectory.) 1979 March and August - Voyagers 1 and 2 began transmitting images of Jupiter and her moons. September - The U.S. probe Pioneer 11 reached Saturn and began transmitting images. 1980 November 13 - Voyager 1 reached Saturn and began transmitting images. 1981 April 12 - Columbia became the first Space Shuttle to be launched. August 26 - Voyager 2 reached Saturn and began transmitting images. 1983 April 4 - The second Space Shuttle, Challenger, was launched. June 19 - Sally Ride became the first American woman in space on Challengers second mission. August 30 - Guion Bluford became the first African-American in space. 1984 February 3 - Astronaut Bruce McCandless became the first man to take an untethered space walk. August 30 - The third Space Shuttle, Discovery, was launched. October - Kathryn Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space. 1985 October 3 - Atlantis, the fourth Space Shuttle, was launched.

1986 January 24 - Voyager 2 began transmitting images from Uranus. January 28 - The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded seconds after liftoff. February 20 - The core section of the Space Station Mir was launched. 1989 August - Voyager 2 began transmitting images from Neptune. 1990 August 10 - The Magellan spacecraft began mapping the surface of Venus using radar equipment. August 24 - The Space Shuttle Discovery deployed the Hubble Space Telescope. 1992 May 7 - The Space Shuttle Endeavor was launched on her maiden voyage. September 12 - Mae Jemison became the first African-American woman in space. 1993 December - The Space Shuttle Endeavor made the first servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope. 1994 February 3 - Sergei Krikalev became the first Russian cosmonaut to fly on a Space Shuttle. 1995 February 2 - Eileen Collins became the first female Shuttle pilot. December - The Galileo probe began transmitting data on Jupiter. 1997 July 4 - The Mars Pathfinder arrived on Mars and later began transmitting images.

1998 October 29 - John Glenn became the oldest man in space. 1999 July 23 - Eileen Collins became the first female Shuttle Commander. 2000 February 14 - The U.S. Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft began transmitting images of the asteroid Eros. 2001 February 12 - NEAR landed on the surface of Eros. April 28 - American Dennis Tito became the first tourist in space after paying the Russian space program $20,000,000. 2003 February 1 - The Space Shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry into the Earths atmosphere. February 13 - An investigative panel found that superheated air almost certainly seeped through a breach in space shuttle Columbias left wing and possibly its wheel compartment during the crafts fiery descent, resulting in the deaths of all seven astronauts. August 25 - NASA launched the largest-diameter infrared telescope ever in space, the Spitzer Space Telescope.

September 21 - NASAs Galileo mission ended a 14-year exploration of the solar systems largest planet and its moons with the spacecraft crashing by design into Jupiter at 108,000 mph. 2004 January 14 - President Bush proposed a new space program that would send humans back to the moon by 2015 and establish a base to Mars and beyond. July 1 - The Cassini spacecraft sent back photographs of Saturns shimmering rings. 2005 July 3 - A NASA spacecraft collided with a comet half the size of Manhattan, creating a brilliant cosmic smashup designed to help scientists study the building blocks of life on earth. July 26 - Space Shuttle Discovery was launched with seven astronauts aboard; this was Americas first manned space shot since the 2003 Columbia disaster. 2006 January 15 - NASA spacecraft Stardust returned safely to Earth in a desert near Salt Lake City with the first dust ever collected from a comet. 2007 August 4 - NASA launched its Phoenix Mars Lander.

August 8 - Space Shuttle Endeavour and a crew of seven blasted off with teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan aboard as a crewmember. Morgan was the first teacher in space since the Challenger disaster in 1986. 2008 January 14 - The NASA space probe Messenger skimmed 124 miles above Mercury. May 25 - NASAs Phoenix Mars Lander landed safely and began sending images home after a 10-month, 422 million-mile journey. Scientists later reported that Phoenix discovered chunks of ice. 2009 March 6 - The NASA spacecraft Kepler was launched. Its mission is to search for planets outside our solar system, in a distant area of the Milky Way. June 18 - NASA launched the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, also known as LCROSS. The mission is to confirm the presence or absence of ice on the moon. On November 13, 2009, NASA scientists announced the discovery of a "significant amount" of ice in a crater near the moons South Pole. 2010 October 10 - Virgin Galactic, a private company, announced the successful first manned glide flight of the VSS Enterprise.

This vehicle is a suborbital plane designed to take private citizens on suborbital space flights. October 11 - President Barack Obama signed legislation focusing NASAs efforts on exploring Mars and the asteroids. December 8 - A private company named SpaceX launched a spacecraft into orbit and returned it to earth safely. It was the first non-government organization to accomplish this. 2011 July 8 - The space shuttle Atlantis became the last American space shuttle to be launched into space. Mission STS-135 and its 4-member crew brought much-needed supplies and equipment to the International Space Station (ISS). July 16 - NASA's Dawn spacecraft became the first man made craft to orbit an asteroid. November 26 - NASA launched Curiosity, the biggest, best equipped robot ever sent to explore another planet. It will reach Mars in 2012. 2012 May 22 - SpaceX, a commercial space company, launched its Dragon C2+ mission to resupply the International Space Station (ISS). August - NASAâs Voyager 1 probe, launched in 1977, entered interstellar space. August 6 - NASA's Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars.

As large as a car, it carried an array of advanced new instruments and experiments. 2013 September 7 - NASA launched the unmanned LADEE spacecraft from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. It was the U.S. space agency's third lunar probe in five years. December 24 - NASA astronauts wrapped up successful repairs at the International Space Station after a rare Christmas Eve spacewalk to fix an equipment cooling system. What does the final shuttle flight mean for space exploration? | Science | The Guardian Final space shuttle mission What does the final shuttle flight mean for space exploration? After more than 130 missions over 30 years and at a cost of £120bn, the space shuttle programme ends on 8 July with the final launch of Atlantis. Two veterans of the flights talk about the thrill of takeoff, the view from above and the next step for mankind in space Discovery takes off from the Kennedy Space Centre in 1988.

Photograph: Roger Ressmeyer Wednesday 6 July 2011 15.01 EDT First published on Wednesday 6 July 2011 15.01 EDT Share on Messenger Close The ritual of hurling people into space is ingrained in the fabric of Florida's space coast , a 40-mile strip of eastern shoreline that runs from Titusville through Cape Canaveral to Palm Bay in the south. In 1961, crowds gathered here to see Alan Shepard blast off aboard a Mercury-Redstone rocket and become the first US citizen in space. The Apollo programme to land men on the moon came swiftly after. From here, astronauts flew to the moon, trundled around in buggies, struck a few golf balls and collected lumps of moon rock before heading home. But this area, which lives in the shadow of the space programme, is facing the end of an era. For the past 30 years, Kennedy Space Centre has been home to the space shuttle, Nasa's great hope for making space travel cheap and commonplace.

Tomorrow, one million spectators are expected to gather at vantage points along the coast to witness the launch of Atlantis, the 135th shuttle mission, and the last flight of the fleet. When Atlantis returns in 12 days time it will be dismantled and dispatched to a museum . The space shuttle fell famously short of expectations. Estimates put the cost of each launch at an exorbitant $1.5bn. Preparation for a mission took months if not years. And flights hardly became routine. Rather than journeying into space once a week – as designers had hoped – Nasa managed only a handful of launches a year. And then there is the human cost. In 1986, the shuttle Challenger was destroyed on takeoff when a rocket booster exploded, killing its crew of seven. Nasa took great efforts to fix the problem and looked hard at the management failures that led to the accident. Then, in 2003, another shuttle was lost high up in the atmosphere, this time when super-hot plasma tore into the wing of Columbia after it sustained damage from foam falling off the main fuel tank during takeoff. Another seven lives lost.

Michael Griffin, the former chief administrator at the US space agency, who bemoaned Nasa's ambitions in space as doing no more than endlessly circling the Earth, called the shuttle "inherently flawed". The end of the shuttle era brings fresh focus on the shortcomings and mismanagement of the Nasa programme, but amid the criticism, it is worth recalling the achievements too. The shuttle launched and repaired – several times – the Hubble space telescope, which continues to capture spectacular images of the cosmos. The shuttle carried the Chandra x-ray observatory into orbit. And, of course, it was the workhorse behind the $100bn International Space Station , a 500-tonne orbiting outpost as roomy as a five-bedroom house. Thanks to the shuttle, astronauts know how to build spacecraft in space, knowledge that will underpin any future attempt to fly humans to other planets. For those who flew on the shuttle, it was the experience of a lifetime. No other rocket has carried astronauts into space and flown them back down through the red hot glow of the heated atmosphere to touch down like a glider on a runway. Here, two veterans describe the experience.

Scott Altman flew four missions, including two to repair the Hubble telescope. Piers Sellers, from Crowborough, Sussex, flew three shuttle missions, and clocked up nearly five million miles aboard Atlantis last year. Preparing for takeoff Scott Altman You wake up around five hours prior to going out to the vehicle. It reminds me of Christmas morning, the level of excitement as you get up and have that last meal, get into your orange launch-and-entry suits in the white room and then get on the bus that takes you out to the pad. There's a background level of anticipation, looking forward to the event. You get out to the pad about three hours prior to the launch. The commander gets in first and is strapped in. The vehicle is on the pad pointed upwards, so everything has been tilted 90 degrees and it is like getting into a different vehicle than the one you trained in. It takes a little effort to get all strapped in, but finally I'm in and the rest of the crew comes in after me. Everything starts to look like the simulators we've spent thousands of hours in. The rhythm feels like the simulators. You forget this is actually launch day and not just another simulation.

But as the clock keeps ticking, you go through your checklist, you get down to the point when everything's sealed up and you start thinking this is a little different. Your heart is beating a little quicker. Piers Sellers A few minutes before launch, the whole shuttle vibrates as it cranks its engines to one side and the other, and backwards. There's a real feeling that the machine is awakening. The seconds go by and everyone is watching. At exactly 10 seconds before launch, all the navigation instruments go from a rest position to active, you can see that navigation is tracking, that it knows where it wants to take the shuttle. A few seconds after that, the main engines light. You can't really feel or hear much at that point. You see the power come up on the indicators in the cockpit, you see the thrust go up from zero to 100% on three engines and then you feel the whole stack sway forwards towards your feet, and that is because the thrust of the engines is so great that it bends the shuttle and stack on its hold-down bolts, and pushes it to one side. They call that the twang.

The twang goes all the way, about 4ft, and then the whole stack bounces back. And at exactly the right moment, zero, the solid rocket boosters light and the hold-down bolts explode and off you go. It feels as if someone lit a bomb underneath your back. You just go flying up into the air, like a gigantic hand pushing you up into the sky. You see the launch tower fall by down one side and you are headed upwards into the sky. There's a tremendous feeling of power, there's a lot of vibration, noise, people yelling over the radio, and you get the feeling there's this 2,500-tonne ship going straight up. You are banging around in your seat, while everything is moving around, swaying around in the cockpit, trying to look at the instruments, trying to concentrate, but tremendously excited. SA The vehicle is shaking incredibly. You can get to switches – you have to take your time and focus on what you're doing and make sure you get to the right switch. As the commander I can see out of my forward window. Mostly you are facing up, so it's nothing but blue sky.

On my third mission, though, there was a thin cloud deck and I looked up out of that window and I saw it coming and all of the sudden it was like "whoooosh!" right through it. Astronaut Mark Lee floats outside Discovery, 149 miles above the Earth, 1994. Photograph: Nasa PS After about 45 seconds, you get the call that the main engines are going to throttle down so that the shuttle can ease through the transonic region , and you watch the thrust fall down on the instruments and then you are aware that you are going supersonic about one minute after you launch, but you are going supersonic straight up, not along, straight up, which is kind of incredible. At some point you see the sky go from blue very quickly to black as you punch out of the atmosphere. You keep hammering along like this at first stage for the first two minutes. There's a lot of vibration, a lot of rattling and rolling in the cockpit, until you get to about two minutes and then the solid rocket boosters fall off, each side of the shuttle, and things smooth right out. You have to make an effort to pull the air into your lungs.

Expulsion is not a problem at all, your chest just collapses again. SA At main engine cut-off, all three shuttle engines shut off and "bang!", just like that you're floating. The transition is instantaneous and you feel your body going forwards as if it's a compressed spring and anything that's not tied down goes floating by. You can't see the ground too easily until a point when the whole stack rolls upright and you go from inverted over the Earth to upright, and as you sweep through that roll, you can look out of the window and see the Earth opening up underneath you. I'll never forget that sight on my very first flight when we rolled in the direction and I was looking out of that window. I saw the curvature of the Earth, and the ocean there, the thin blue line at the horizon that is the atmosphere, and it was just an incredible sight. And then it was: "OK, come back in on the dials, let's get back to work." Floating in orbit PS We have a plan to get us through the first day in orbit. You get out of your suit, hang it up, then convert the shuttle from being a rocket into being a spacecraft.

You're putting out computers, moving bags around, stuff like that, and that takes longer than you'd think, about four or five hours. The next day you catch up with the Space Station and the day after that you dock. And that's exciting. The Space Station goes from being a very distant star when you can first see it to a brighter and brighter light, and then eventually this gigantic silver structure that's hanging there in the black sky above you. You sneak up below it and at the appropriate moment, the shuttle does a pitch around manoeuvre, where in effect it does a loop 600ft below the station, so the guys on the station can photograph the shuttle and see if there's been any damage and send all that digital data back to the ground. You do that and then you come up level with the station and slowly ease yourself in towards it, a bit like a very delicate parking job. PS The extraordinary thing, particularly when you're spacewalking, is that sometimes it looks like you'd expect it to look, which is you're flying over a huge rotating ball with a black sky and it's breathtakingly beautiful. That's how you'd expect it to be, only better.

But sometimes your perceptions can play some tricks on you. Often you feel that the world is like a big wall on one side of you and you are flying horizontally around it. At other times it's like a big ball above you and you're going underneath it. So your orientation changes a little bit but it sinks in that the world is a sphere, and you're going around it, sometimes under it, sideways, or over it. When you look at the world it's incredibly bright. The seas, the oceans, they look like blue neon. It's so bright, it hurts your eyes. You can see everything on the continents, you can see the rivers, the mountains, forests, cities, all sorts of things. You can even see big fields if you look carefully. SA I joined Nasa just before the 10-year anniversary of the Challenger accident. I really felt that Nasa had done its homework, that we'd learned the lessons from Challenger and that basically it was a management failure: the signs were there but Nasa didn't heed them as well as they could have. Six of the seven astronauts on Columbia [which was destroyed on entry in 2003] were very close friends of mine.

Three were my classmates, the other three were in the class right after me. Dave Brown had been my flight surgeon in the navy. It was a shock to me to realise that basically we did almost the same thing again, in that we missed the warning signs: foam falling off the vehicle was a threat and we hadn't learned from that mistake. A long time ago, during the Apollo 1 fire, Frank Borman (a former Apollo commander) said what we had was a failure of imagination, to imagine what could have gone wrong and try to stop it from happening. I think the same thing happened with Columbia. Returning to Earth PS To leave, you undock and fly around the Space Station and that's all very slow and balletic and pretty, but not very dramatic. You then spend a day coasting around the Earth, packing things up and getting ready to come home. On entry day you get up early and it's a sprint. You have to pack everything away, secure everything and get in your pressure suit. The whole business really starts at the de-orbit burn.

You turn the shuttle so the tail is pointing into the wind, if you like, let rip with the engines for a long burn to kick the shuttle out of orbit, then flip the shuttle over so its nose is pointing the right way for hitting the atmosphere. Very quickly after that you start descending into the upper layers of the atmosphere. You don't see much to start with, but after a while you get this beautiful cherry-red glow all round the shuttle and you can see it snapping over the tail. It kind of pulses, but over the forward cockpit windows it's just a beautiful cherry red that you can see through. In daylight you can see through this red haze and see the world. We actually saw a sunrise come up through the red glow of the entry. SA From the moment you do your final de-orbit burn, when you're about 12,000 miles from your landing point, one thing you know for certain is that in about an hour the shuttle is going to hit the surface of the Earth. The challenge to you, as commander and pilot, is to make sure where you hit the Earth has a runway underneath it.

You really don't have any sense of gravity yet, but as you go through the entry a little bit, you'll go to hang a card on a Velcro spot or something and let go of it and notice it slowly floats to the floor, and you're like, "Wow, look at that!" And you do it again: "Hey, gravity, we haven't seen that in two weeks!" It's amazing. Your perspective has changed. You don't expect things to fall any more and when they start doing so, it's almost like a new experience. You're coming through the atmosphere and if it's night where you are, you look out of the overhead window and you start seeing this little green glow, which is the atmosphere heating up by the friction of the shuttle smashing through it. As you go further and lower, you start to notice it going a little bit darker, into the yellows.

On my second entry, I was looking out at that and I started to see it get a little bit darker, so I floated up in my seat a little bit and looked towards the nose and I could see it transitioning from yellow to kind of pink and I floated up a little higher and it was starting to go red, and it was like – "I don't know if I want to look any more" – so I floated back down in my seat because it just looked too hot, too brutal out there. PS The shuttle does a couple of big S-turns to slow down over the Pacific ocean. In our case, we came zipping across Panama and Cuba and up towards Florida very fast, in just a few minutes. You pop out of the sky at Mach five [3,840mph], and everyone below you hears a double bang as you go transonic. Then you do this great sort of spiral dive over Florida and come down shooting towards the runway, nose pointed almost at the dirt. At the last minute, the commander pulls the nose up and squeaks it on to the runway. You feel the main wheels go down, then the nose wheel, they deploy the chute to slow you down, and then you gradually roll to a stop.

At that point there are a lot of smiles. People are happy. Hopefully the mission went well, nobody got hurt, all the tasks got accomplished, and you did it all without disgracing yourself or your friends. I've flown on two shuttles and they both felt a little bit different. They are real ships with their individual characters and their own nicks and bumps. You look at the shuttle, it's not as if it's this pristine, shining, gleaming piece of metallic technology – it looks like a ship, it's got dents and burns and inside multiple crews have whacked the paintwork and you can see scratches and things. They are ships that have been operated and lived in and done these incredible voyages all with their individual characters. I am personally very fond of the shuttle. When they wind up in museums I'll go and see them and I'll be happy to see them like old friends. The future of space PS You will hear that the shuttle cost a lot of money, and it's very complicated and has some embedded risks in its design and all of that is completely true. But if you take the long view, you have to look at what was achieved with the shuttle.

You got a beautiful space station, an international space station, a complete 500-tonne orbiting laboratory run by 16 countries that I think is going to deliver some real home runs over the next 10 to 15 years. You got Hubble, not only launched but repaired and serviced four times, Chandra, and a whole lot of other instruments of science. But I think the most important thing that came out of it was we took the business of working and assembling things in space to a high level of artistry. If we go somewhere else, such as Mars, we are going to have to assemble our spaceships in orbit. We know how to do that now. Having put the Space Station together, we know how to do work in orbit, to assemble big structures and complicated pieces of engineering. We've taken a big leap forward in our technology and our operations. SA Nasa is re-focusing, re-grouping. I think the whole country needs to decide what they want out of a space programme and where we should go. I do think that, in the future, the big things we do in space are going to take the cooperation of the whole world.

So the International Space Station is a great partnership to start that effort moving forward to put people on Mars and explore the outer planets and to start extending humanity from our foothold here on Earth into the stars. I am hopeful that the spirit of cooperation will be good not just for efforts in space but for humanity in general, as we learn how to work together. I think we have made a transition into a somewhat unusual place for Nasa, that we're not exactly sure what the next vehicle is, what the next step is. But I think in the end human spaceflight is something that's important to people in general and to humanity as a whole, for looking out and pushing ourselves to ask the next questions and figure out what's out there.

Nasa employees weep at Kennedy Space Centre as half a century of American dominance in space comes to a close Published: 21 Jul 2011 Nasa employees turn out in darkness to welcome the space shuttle home after 126 million miles travelled Published: 21 Jul 2011 Photos of NASA's Last Space Shuttle Launch Photos of NASA's Last Space Shuttle Launch By SPACE.com Staff | July 8, 2011 11:30am ET MORE STS-135 Launch Spectators on the A. Max Brewer Bridge in Titusville, Florida Credit: NASA/Frank Michaux After 30 years and 135 missions, residents and visitors to Florida's Space Coast crowd the new A. Max Brewer Bridge in Titusville to see the rocket's red glare of NASA's Space Shuttle Program soar for the last time on July 8, 2011.

Guests Line NASA Causeway for Atlantis Launch Credit: NASA/Frank Michaux After 30 years and 135 missions, invited guests congregate along the NASA Causeway to see the rocket's red glare of NASA's Space Shuttle Program soar for the last time, on July 8, 2011 Spectators in Boats View the Atlantis Launch Credit: NASA/Frank Michaux After 30 years and 135 missions, residents and visitors to Florida's Space Coast traverse the waters near Port Canaveral to see the rocket's red glare of NASA's Space Shuttle Program soar for the last time, July 8, 2011. Atlantis Lifts Off Credit: Roger Guillemette for SPACE.com Shuttle Atlantis is seen a few moments into its final flight on July 8, 2011. Last Shuttle Crew Waves Farewell Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett Dressed in their bright-orange launch-and-entry suits, the final four astronauts to launch aboard a space shuttle wave to media and employees cheering them on in front of the Astronaut Crew Quarters in the Operations and Checkout Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 8, 2011.

From left, are STS-135 Mission Specialists Rex Walheim and Sandy Magnus, Pilot Doug Hurley, and Commander Chris Ferguson. A View from Above Credit: NASA Kennedy (via Twitter) The space shuttle Atlantis' last launch on July 8, 2011 is seen from above through the window of a Shuttle Training Aircraft. Close-up of Atlantis' Launch Credit: Roger Guillemette for SPACE.com Atlantis just clears the tower in this closer view of the launch on July 8, 2011. Shuttle Atlantis Launches on Mission STS-135 Credit: NASA Shuttle Atlantis launched on mission STS-135 July 8, 2011. Atlantis Clears the Tower Shuttle Atlantis clears the tower, July 8, 2011. Elmo Talks with NASA Astronaut Mike Massimino Credit: NASA/Paul E. Alers NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, left, and Sesame Street's Elmo speak at the STS-135 Tweetup on July 7, 2011 at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Elmo asked the astronauts questions about living and working in space. Don't Burn that Flag!

Credit: NASA Kennedy (via Twitter) Atlantis appears to fly past flags at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on July 8, 2011. Watching Atlantis Launch Credit: Roger Guillemette for SPACE.com Spectators in the foreground watch as Atlantis launches on its final flight, July 8, 2011. Heads-down, That's How Atlantis Rolls Credit: NASA TV Shuttle Atlantis rolls into the heads-down position after launch, July 8, 2011. Atlantis Smokin' Shuttle Atlantis climbs to space on a column of smoke, July 8, 2011. Atlantis Flies into Clouds Credit: NASA (via Facebook) With the International Space Station flying 220 miles high & east of Christchurch, New Zealand, space shuttle Atlantis launched at 11:29 a.m. EDT, July 8, 2011. Atlantis' External Tank Camera's View of Launch Credit: NASA TV The camera mounted on Atlantis' external tank shows a unique view looking back towards the ground as Atlantis launches. Close-out Crews Shares Message Before Last Launch Credit: NASA TV

Question: What is the name of the Space Shuttle launched into orbit for the last time from the Kennedy Space Station in July 2011?
Answer: Atlantis